Online Bible 1995 March/ROM-1025.iso/olb/gill/3_600_e.lzh/3_614.TXT

Text File | 1995-01-30 | 8KB | 154 lines

\*Ver. 9. \\Thou shalt make them as a fiery oven\\, &c.]
Some think the allusion is to David's causing the
Ammonites to pass through the brick-kiln, \\#2Sa
12:31\\; others to the burning of Sodom and Gomorrah:
it represents what a severe punishment
shall be inflicted on the enemies of Christ; they
shall be cast into a fiery oven, or furnace of fire,
as Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were by
the order of Nebuchadnezzar; so some render the
words, %thou shalt put them into a fiery oven%, \^k\^, %as%,
being put for \^b\^, %into% {c}: wicked men are as dry
trees, as stubble, as thorns or briers, and are fit fuel
for a fiery oven or furnace; by which is meant the
wrath and fury of God, which is poured forth as fire;
and this has had its fulfilment in part in the Jews at
Jerusalem's destruction; when that day of the Lord
burned like an oven, and the proud and haughty Jews,
and who dealt wickedly by Christ, were burned up in
it, \\#Mal 4:1\\; and will have an additional accomplishment
when the whore of Babylon shall be burnt with
fire, and when the beast and false prophet shall be
cast alive into a lake of fire burning with brimstone;
and still more fully at the general conflagration, when
will be the perdition of ungodly men, and the earth
and all that is therein shall be burnt up; and
especially when all wicked men and devils shall be cast
into the lake and furnace of fire, where will be weeping,
wailing, and gnashing of teeth; see \\#Re 17:16
19:20 20:10-15 Mt 13:41,42 25:41 2Pe 3:7,10,12\\. This will be
\*\\in the time of thine anger\\,
or %of thy countenance% {d}; not his gracious, but his angry
countenance; when he shall put on a fierce look, and
appear as the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and stir up all
his wrath;
\*\\the Lord shall swallow them up in his
wrath\\; not that they shall be annihilated; their souls
remain after death, and their bodies after the resurrection;
and will be tormented with the fire of God's
wrath for ever and ever; the phrase is expressive of
utter ruin, of the destruction of soul and body in
hell; see \\#Ps 35:25\\; Jarchi takes it to be a prayer,
%may the Lord swallow them up%, &c.
\*\\\and the fire shall
devour them\\; that is, as the Targum paraphrases it,
the fire of hell; or, however, it designs the wrath of
God, who is a consuming fire; or that fiery indignation
of his, which shall devour the adversaries; which
comes down upon them either in temporal judgments
here, or in their everlasting destruction hereafter.

\*Ver. 10. \\Their fruit shall thou destroy from the
earth\\, &c.] Meaning the offspring of wicked men;
the fruit of the womb, \\#Ps 127:3\\; the same with
their seed in the next clause:
\*\\and their seed from among
the children of men\\; see \\#Ps 37:28\\; which must
be understood of such of their seed, and offspring as
are as they were when born; are never renewed and
sanctified, but are like their parents; as the Jews were,
their parents were vipers, and they were serpents,
the generation of them; and were the children of the
devil, and did his works: now these passages had
their accomplishment in the Jews, when the day of
God's wrath burnt them up, and left them neither
root nor branch, \\#Mal 4:1\\; and in the Pagan empire,
when every mountain and island were moved out of
their places, and the Heathen perished out of the land,
\\#Re 6:14 Ps 10:16\\; and will be further accomplished
when the Lord shall punish the wicked woman
Jezebel, the antichristian harlot, and kill her children
with death, \\#Re 2:23\\; see \\#Ps 104:35\\.

\*Ver. 11. \\For they intended evil against thee\\, &c.]
All evil, whether in thought or deed, if not
immediately and directly, yet is ultimately against the
Lord, whose law is transgressed, and who is despised
and reflected upon as a lawgiver; all sin is an
hostility committed against God, or against Christ, against
the Lord and his Anointed, or against his people,
who are all one as himself: the intention of evil
is evil, and is cognizable by the Lord, and punishable
by him:
\*\\they imagined a mischievous device, [which] they
are not able to [perform]\\; not the death of Christ; that
was indeed in itself a mischievous device of theirs,
but that they performed, though they had not their
end in it; they expected his name would then perish,
and they should hear no more of him: but rather it respects
his resurrection from the dead, they could not
prevent, though they took all imaginable care that them
might be no show of it; and when they found he was
really raised from the dead, they contrived a wicked
scheme to stop the credit of it, but in vain, \\#Mt 27:63-66
28:12-14\\; and Jews and Gentiles, and
Papists, have formed schemes and done all they can
to root the Gospel, cause, and interest of Christ, out of
the world, but have not been able to perform it.

\*Ver. 12. \\Therefore shall thou make them turn their
back\\, &c.] Or flee and run away to private places, to
hide themselves from the wrath of God and of the
Lamb, though to no purpose; or %make them turn [behind
thy] back%: God will turn his back upon them, and
be negligent and careless of them, and not regard them
when they cry in their misery and destruction. Some
Jewish interpreters {e} understand it of their being put
together on one side, in one corner, and be separate
from the people of God; to which sense the Targum
inclines, rendering the word for %back% the %shoulder%,
which sometimes signifies unanimity and conjunction,
\\#Zep 3:9\\; and thus, being all together by themselves,
the wrath of God shall be poured forth upon them, and
they shall be destroyed at once: so the Christians
were, by the providence of God, brought out of Jerusalem
before its destruction; and the saints will be
called out of Babylon before its fall; and the goats, the
wicked, will be separated from the righteous, and set
together at Christ's left hand; for they shall not stand
in the congregation of the righteous: but the best sense
of the words is, %thou shalt set them [for a] butt% or {f} %heap%;
or, as it is in the Hebrew text, a shoulder; a butt to
shoot at being so called, because it is earth heaped up
like a shoulder; see \\#Job 16:12,13\\; and to this agrees
what follows:
\*\\[when] thou shalt make ready [thine arrows] upon thy strings
against\\ \\the face of them\\; that is, direct
the arrows of his wrath and vengeance right against
them; see \\#Ps 7:11-13\\.

\*Ver. 13. \\Be thou exalted, Lord, in thine own strength\\,
&c.] Exert thy strength, display thy power in such
manner, that thou mayest be exalted and magnified on
account of it. This was fulfilled at the destruction of
Jerusalem, when the kingdom of God came with power,
\\#Mr 9:1\\; and will be again when Babylon shall be
utterly destroyed, because the Lord is strong who
judgeth her, \\#Re 18:8\\; and finally at the day of
judgment, when the wicked will be punished with
everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord,
and the glory of his power, \\#2Th 1:9\\;
\*\\[so] will we
sing and praise thy power\\; forms of such songs of
praise may be seen, as Cocceius observes, in \\#Re 11:15-18
15:3,4 19:1-7\\; at the sounding
of the seventh trumpet, at the victory over the beast,
and his image, and at the destruction of Babylon.


{c} Vide Aben Ezram in loc.
{d} \^Kynp\^ %vultus tui%, V. L. so Sept. Aethiop. Gejerus, Muis, Ainsworth;
%faciei iratae tuae%, Junius & Tremellius; so Michaelis.
{e} Kimchi & Ben Melech in loc.
{f} \^Mkv wmtyvt\^ %ponis eos metam%, Cocceius; humerum, Pagninus,
Montanus, Gejerus; %velut tumulum%, Junius & Tremellius, Piscator.